


When You Don't Say Goodbye

by GiraffesAndDietPepsi



Series: When You Let Go [2]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Escapism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26163691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GiraffesAndDietPepsi/pseuds/GiraffesAndDietPepsi
Summary: Connor reflects on himself before he goes to the park with a bottle of pills.
Relationships: Connor Murphy & Zoe Murphy
Series: When You Let Go [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899919
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	When You Don't Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> This is written as a companion to my multi chapter fic When You Let Go, but it can be read as a stand alone.

There is a bone-deep tiredness he feels all the time. He’s missing the motivation to do anything anymore, and he’s so incredibly done with trying. He just wants it to be over.

Connor is ready for this feeling to end.

He knows the doctors say he’s depressed, and he can honestly say he doesn’t care. He wants something to be different. He needs something in his life to change.

Nothing ever changes for Connor.

All that happens is things get progressively worse for him.

Growing up, he wasn’t exactly a happy kid. The teachers said he had anger issues. He pushed a printer off a desk in second grade. The situation wouldn’t have been as bad if Jared Kleinman hadn’t spread the rumor that he threw it at the teacher. That incident turned most of the people in his grade against him. 

That wasn’t the only incident of anger he displayed at school. He would occasionally shove kids away from himself in the hallway. He may have yelled at them when they were passing by him. He doesn’t remember most of the incidents to be honest. He barely remembers the printer incident if he’s being honest. At this point, he’s not completely sure he didn’t mean to hurt someone with the printer. He doesn’t think he meant to.

Connor doesn’t consider himself a violent person exactly. It’s that anger and violence are the only things he can feel most days. Instead of staying in the mental headspace of a numb limb, he clings to the anger that swells inside of himself. This is the root of most of his problems.

Once he started to get angry all the time, he started to isolate himself from his family. This isn’t always easy, especially when your family is constantly butting their heads into your business. He can barely remember the last good memory he has with his family. He vaguely remembers a time at an apple orchard with a toy plane. He wishes he were better so he could be better for his family. He wishes he could be better for Zoe.

He has asked his parents multiple times for therapy. They complied with his requests a few times, but when the results weren’t immediate, his dad would take him out of the program. 

The final straw before they took him out of the most recent program was when he threatened to kill Zoe at the beginning of the summer. He doesn’t remember the incident at all. He doesn’t know why he was angry at Zoe. He doesn’t know how he ended up banging on her door or how his dad got him back to his room. That terrifies him. Well, it would terrify him if he could fucking feel something.

He hates the anger, but he hates the all-encompassing numbness he feels when he’s not angry more. It’s like the medical injection at the dentist given when someone gets a cavity filled. That is the worst feeling in the world in his opinion. He just wants to feel anything other than that gross,  _ wrong _ feeling. Most of the time he spends nowadays is spent either staring at the ceiling trying to get the motivation to do something or attempting to leech off of other people’s feelings in books. The latter isn’t full-proof, but it helps a little bit.

Growing up he always loved reading. He liked getting to escape the mess that he is every once in a while. As he’s gotten older, it’s helped him to feel like less of a freak, and while he doesn’t get the same amount of enjoyment from it that he once did, Connor feels the ghost happiness run through him every time he sits down to read.

Reading has always been his favorite form of escapism, and it’s the only form he’s managed to keep a firm grasp on. Everything else in life he would try for a little bit, but he’d always get bored with it. He’d always come back to the beautiful fake worlds that other people would build for him to read. He doesn’t like nonfiction because the real world is never better than the ones that can be created by the human imagination.

He thinks he likes the idea of being able to create a world to escape to, and he has written a few pieces. He has a hard time finishing things though. It’s why he likes short stories. He can write a small snippet for people to read and escape to without the dedication to a longer piece of fiction. He has written one long piece of fiction that when he started it, he fully intended to finish it. The problem with finishing it isn’t just a lack of motivation to keep writing. The problem is also that he doesn’t know where it could possibly go. Connor doesn’t know where he could take the story to get to the ending he wants. He has a few plans for where he wanted it to go, but he’s never going to get to that. He didn’t know how to work the smaller scenes to lead to the ending he had planned. He’s just going to abandon the work in general.

Connor laughs as the thought crosses his mind. It seems fitting that he had originally planned this long work of art out, but he has to quit before he gets to the end. Leave a work in progress never to be finished. That’s what his life is. An abandoned work by an author who forgot how best to write. 

He can’t do anything anymore. Nothing he does is  _ right _ . He went to apologize to a kid earlier, and he just made it worse. He can’t get anything right.

Well.

He can do one thing right.

He grabs the bottle of pills from his sock drawer. Before he leaves the house, he glances into Zoe’s room. 

_ Maybe if I could just talk to her _ .

He wishes he had talked to her. He steels himself and walks away from Zoe’s room.

He hadn’t really planned to leave a note, but he figures the words written in the letter he stole earlier are far more accurate than anything he could have ever written himself.

He takes a deep breath, walks out of his house, and begins his walk to the park.

**Author's Note:**

> This is written as sort of the Connor prologue of When You Let Go. 
> 
> This is the WYLG update for the week. I really wanted to do a character study, and I loved this idea for my fic.


End file.
